How can the moves you mention here be accurately judged through sound rather
than eyes? We would need good hand/ear coordination, and some of that might
be hard to represent with the capabilities of the soundcards and/or machines
that some blind people can afford.
As for Shades of Doom, one thing that throws me is when I hear something in
front of me, I face it and move forward, only to bump into a wall. I know
it's on the other side of the wall, but the idea seems weird at first. It's
just something I have to keep in mind when playing, I suppose.
---
Shepherds are the best beasts, but Labs are a close second.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas Ward" <thomasward1...@gmail.com>
To: "Gamers Discussion list" <gamers@audyssey.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2013 11:03 PM
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] replayability and Usa games was Re: Looking For
Something New to Play
Hi Dark,
Sure. I do understand your point of view as it is rather distressing
to know how many V.I. gamers assume that something like Q9 is the be
all and end all to side-scrollers when guys like you and I know
better.
Fact of the matter is that for better than a decade side-scrollers
were the primary style of games for Nintendo, Sega, and PC and it gave
rise to such popular series as Megaman, Super Mario, Donkey Kong,
Castlevania, and so on. Since I figure the majority of blind PC users
were unable to fully enjoy the original side-scrollers they are
lacking some huge conceptual differences between a simple
side-scroller like Q9 and say Mario Brothers.
There are a whole bunch of conceptual differences that just haven't
been fully realized by the blind gaming community. For far too long a
lot of games have you push the up arrow key and the left or right
arrow key x time to jump a pit etc. This is not only very unrealistic,
but lacks the skill and grace of games with a traditional analog jump
system in place. Games where how high and far you jumped were based on
a number of factors like if you were running before you jumped,
weather or not you were jumping off a ledge,and how long you held
down the jump button while using the directional cross to control the
characters movement. Even when you landed you would occasionally
bounce or slide which made it difficult for a precision pinpoint
landing. Such things haven't been the norm in audio games, and I
suspect it is because a true analog jump system requires good hand and
eye coordination so yes we could use a few good side-scrollers of that
type to at least introduce the V.I. community to what they are
missing.
At the same time I am personally equally conscious of the fact we
haven't had many FPS games that lives up to mainstream standards. Yes,
Shades of Doom is good, and yes Swamp introduces us to the online FPS
type affair, but I've seen a lot of features that have never been
introduced in any audio game for one reason or another.
Let's take a Third Person Shooter like the infamous tomb Raider for
example. In that series you can get Lara Croft to perform a wide range
of acrobatic maneuvers above and beyond just jumps. She can do
summersaults, flips, rolls, and swan dive off a ledge into a lake. She
can safety drop from ledges, swing from ropes and vines, army crawl
under swirling blades, as well as run up to a ledge etc and vault over
it. In Tomb Raider Legend and Anniversary Lara carries a grappling
hook which she uses to swing over traps and to climb up to areas of
the tomb inaccessible through any other means. Point being that there
are a lot of aspects to a full on 3d game that no 2d side-scroller can
quite compare to.
Regarding nav systems I have to agree here. Monkey Business was
imprecise, and I'm not quite sure why that was. However, I do know of
the issue you speak of where you would here the beep, beep, beep of
the object locator only to walk past the item, or walk around it
several times before picking up the coin, sword, or whatever it was
you were trying to pik up. Oh, that use to bug the heck out of me.
Cheers!
---
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